Tag: books

Forrest left me to douse the fire and read Ghost Rider while he went for a real ride. Sprocket and I pretty much took the day easy as I couldn’t drag him out of the cool cabin and I couldn’t put down the book.

Forrest went riding with Rick and friends. “It was fun. It was 160 miles of dirt all mixed up.” In the evening, Roxanne made a fabulous BBQ dinner with pasta salad, chicken, and corn on the cob. Everything was fantastic! Forrest and I headed back up to the cabin later and packed the jeep to move on to the Blue Ridge Parkway!

First order of business on Thursday was to reorganize our supplies for the trip, because we’d moved up our departure date the “things to go” just went rather than being carefully packed away. The Cherokee and motorcycle both got baths and Sprocket got to run around the yard and play in the hose.

After we’d finished up with our road “chores,” we loaded the bike back on the Cherokee and headed into town for a bit. Forrest went to visit some friends at Moab Tour Company (where he used to give Hummer tours) while I hung out in Back of Beyond Books (pretty much one of my favorite bookstores ever) before we all headed up to Slickrock. Forrest rode his bike around the Slickrock trail while Sprocket and I walked the practice route. Sprocket had a blast but that up and down the rock in the warm weather just tuckered him out. He got back to the jeep and crawled right under it and wouldn’t move. I had to give him his water under there!

Afterwards, we made a quick pit stop at the grocery store and took our lunches over to a park where Sprocket played in the fountain. We came back to Danette’s and then went out to hike on Steelbender. We had to drag Sprocket out from his kennel but he came. He had a blast splashing around in Mill Creek—I think he decided it was worth getting up for. He got to walk back to the car with Danette though because Forrest, Robin, and I decided to take a “scrambling” route over a fin of rock. It was really fun, I love how there are so many opportunities to do that here!

We finished up the day with dinner at Pasta Jay’s in town—the pasta was pretty darn good. Back at the house, we all headed for bed pretty quickly, it had been a busy day!

Things are still progressing here in Philomath. Forrest spent most of yesterday working on the Cherokee and checked a few more items from the list. (I must say, my jeep has been getting five star restorative services in preparation for the trip.)

For my part, I’m trying to clear out the house. I’m working on selling various small things we don’t really need on Craigslist but more importantly trying to sell off some of the items Forrest carted home from the HP auction so we don’t have to cart them around. The house is well on the way to being packed up–the maps came down yesterday and the walls look sooo empty!

I also finished Blue Highways last night. I was continually struck by how many places I’ve already overlapped with Least-Heat Moon’s travels. His route in the Sierra’s almost exactly followed where Forrest and I were last August, traveling through Quincy up to Lassen National Park then following California Route 89 along Hat Creek (he was brave enough to jump into it’s gorgeous but frigid waters…I chickened out). He also visited Crater Lake, where we visited just last fall. His next stop was actually Corvallis where he used US 20 to travel out to the coast, mentioning Philomath and Burnt Woods before arriving in Newport and traveling 101 north to Depot Bay and Seaside.

His travels continued on US 30 passing through Astoria on the way to St. Helens which reminded me of my trip to Long Beach with Maryanne and Katie ages ago–the trip where the drunken Asian trophy wife worried about us, where we were all horrendously sunburned by the unexpected June sun, where we told the park ranger we were all 17 to get a discount a museum, where the Blazer seat broke, where we were completely soaked but decided to go home via Astoria anyway. He headed out WA 14 along the Columbia sparking memories of Forrest and I getting a private tour of Bonneville Dam and searching out a hot springs (which turned out to be flooded). Finally, his discussions of New England, particularly Woodstock, Vermont and Kennebunkport, Maine also delighted me. I’d been to both towns and cannot wait to return to my old stomping grounds for a bit.

It was the places he mentioned that I haven’t been to yet but will be arriving in soon that delighted me most though–hearing about Cajun Country: Breaux Bridge, St. Martinville, Opelousas, New Iberia, Abbeville; reading about his drives through Appalachia; and generally savoring the excitement of starting out on a new adventure to new places!

I successfully defended my masters project on Thursday so now it is all systems go for our trip! I am so excited to be hitting the road “with my boys.” We’re working on getting the house and garage packed up–I think we’ve packed as much as we’ll be able to for awhile now. Hopefully we’ll start seriously checking off some items from our pre-trip to-do list this week! In the meantime, I’m re-reading Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon and imagining our trip as a less moody version of his trek in Ghost Dancing.